


a funny thing happened on the way to scarborough

by interestinggin



Category: Robin Hood (BBC 2006)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anachronistic Drinking Games, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-18
Updated: 2017-09-18
Packaged: 2018-12-31 07:10:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12127206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/interestinggin/pseuds/interestinggin
Summary: “I have never,” says Will, pointing the wineskin at a tree slightly to Allan’s right, “stolen anything.”“That’s a massive lie, though, isn’t it, mate?” Allan retorts, rolling over onto his front.“‘Tisn’t.”“We’re outlaws. Stealin’s all we bloody did!”“Noooo, because - ”“ROB FROM THE RICH,” Allan yells, waving a hand which once had a beer in it, “GIVE TO THE NOT RICH. WE ARE ROBBIN’ GOOD.”





	a funny thing happened on the way to scarborough

**Author's Note:**

> Set after S1E12 and written for a very patient anon as part of #[mygangtome](https://mygangtome.tumblr.com/), an annual celebration of all things Robin Hood.

“You’re  _kidding_  me,” Allan says bluntly.

Will shrugs. “Luke cooked.”

“Luke’s a  _baby_. He’s a  _kid_.”

“So Mum cooked. Before, you know…”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t go on about it,” says Allan hurriedly. He points at the pair of rabbits that Will is still clutching, fresh from the snare that isn’t theirs and probably belongs to someone who needs it more. “You don’t even know how to make a  _stew_?”

“You put things in a pot and boil them,” says Will dismissively. “Everyone knows that.”

“God  _almighty_ , William.”

Will scowls, still sullen, younger than before. He hasn’t smiled since they reached the edge of Sherwood, settling instead into an awkward, irritable demeanor. Allan looks at him in utter despair, and then at the rabbits, which have a similar expression to Will.

“Right, well, alright. Gimme those coneys. We’ll _‘put ‘em in a pot’_ ,” he says pointedly, “and you go see if you can find some nettles or some herbs or somethin’ to fill it out. Put some meat on your bones.”

“Herbs,” says Will bleakly.

“ _Herbs_ ,” Allan repeats. He reaches over, takes the rabbits, and gently but firmly swats Will on the arse. “You need your greens, you do, growing lad like you. Go on. Off you trot.”

 

“I have never,” says Will, pointing the wineskin at a tree slightly to Allan’s right, “stolen anything.”

“That’s a massive lie, though, isn’t it, mate?” Allan retorts, rolling over onto his front.

“‘Tisn’t.”

“We’re outlaws. Stealin’s all we bloody did!”

“Noooo, because - ”

“ROB FROM THE RICH,” Allan yells, waving a hand which once had a beer in it, “GIVE TO THE NOT RICH. WE ARE ROBBIN’ GOOD.”

“I have never stolen anything that was not gold or things but that were stolen from bad people to help people who deserve it.”

“That’s the worst one yet,” says Allan sagely. “You tit.”

“Just drink,” says Will savagely, thrusting his wineskin towards Allan. Allan, who does not need to be told twice, obeys.

“Alright,” he says, once he’s come up for air, “my turn.”

He looks sideways at Will, like he’s thought of something funny.

Will sighs. “What.”

“I have never,” says Allan slyly, “kissed a girl.” And he drinks.

Will’s bottle is halfway to his lips. He pauses.

His ears turn slowly red.

“I knew it,” Allan crows. “I bloody well knew it.”

“I have,” Will mutters, but he still doesn’t drink.

Allan shuffles, kicking his legs out in front of him and leaning back against a tree. “I bet you have,” he says, not really addressing the words to Will as much as to the world.

“I’ve… kissed… girls,” Will repeats, irritated now. “And that’s not even how you play the game, Allan, you’re supposed to say things you haven’t done.”

“I’ve never not kissed a girl,” Allan says happily, “unlike  _Willlllllie_.” The last word is trilled, almost, as Allan rolls it around his mouth. He seems to be enjoying the taste of it.

“I  _have_  kissed a girl,” he snaps, taking a grudging swig from the skin.

“Oh yeah?” Allan rolls his head to one side to meet Will’s eyes. “Who?”

Will presses his lips together tightly. “Nobody you know.”

“Bollocks.”

“Just ‘cause I don’t  _wave it about_  every five seconds.”

“I don’t wave it about,” says Allan. He thinks about it. “Much.”

“What about Much?”

“No, I mean, I don’t wave it about  _much_.”

“I should hope not. He wouldn’t like that.”

Allan bursts out laughing, spraying beer everywhere, and places his hands on his hips in a way that’s supposed to look girly and actually makes him look a little winded; makes a noise of disgust supposed to emulate Much and actually closer to a chicken.

Will laughs too, more from relief at the change of subject than anything else. 

The laughter dies off as it was always going to, leaving them both lost in the kind of thoughts that come from slightly too much beer and far too much guilt. Will stares into the flickering flames, chewing on his bottom lip; his face long and drawn. Allan laughs again, a little awkwardly, but gives up quickly enough.

“What d’you think they’re doing?” Will asks. 

Allan’s answer comes quick, too quick. “God, you don’t half jabber on. Must be halfway to dawn by now.”

“D’you think they’ve noticed-”

“I think you think too much, mate,” Allan says firmly. With that, he rolls over in the spot he’s lying in and closes his eyes, cloak around his ears and shoulders hunched against the world and all its moral implications. “Get some sleep, alright? Long walk and all that.”

It never takes him long to fall unconscious; Allan can sleep anywhere, and tonight is no different. Will watches him sleep, shaded in golds and greys by firelight. The forest is hushed with night and all the usual, familiar sounds that comfort him in Sherwood seem to fade into nothingness; no birds, no rustles, just quiet. With nothing but the breathing of both men to break the silence and not even a moon to light the sky, the clearing feels a very desolate spot. 

He curls up under his cloak, close enough to Allan to get a share of his body warmth; close enough to feel the rise and fall of his chest. It’s not the first time they’ve slept like this, but it’s the first time without the others huddling with them, and it seems strange and lonely.

Will’s never been further north than Worksop; he’s never needed to, with his whole life mapped out for him standing at the Locksley forge. His father’s life had been written from birth, and Will and Luke had never thought to be any different. Even being in the gang had an inevitability to it; the certain routine of the days, the closeness to home like a pang in the chest, the sense that what was happening was right. Suddenly, Scarborough seems impossibly far, and Nottingham even further. Will feels adrift. Panic rises in the back of his throat and the pit of his stomach, the feeling of hopelessness flooding him as it did when he first sat in the castle cells on that April afternoon. Swallowing, blind with loss, he reaches out and grips onto something to steady him.

It’s Allan’s shirt.

Allan shifts in his sleep, but his eyes stay closed, his breathing deep and even. He curls his back a little more, meeting the palm of Will’s hand, and murmurs something in the language of dreams. His skin is hot under the cloth, and firm, and reassuringly real and familiar. Will feels his heartbeat slowly returning to normal, the panic passing along with the guilt. 

If this is where he is, then it’s where he’s meant to be.

He listens to Allan’s snores, hand still clinging to the back of his shirt; watches the stars fade to dawn and the fire burn out to ash, and eventually and thankfully, Will falls asleep.

 

“Look, if you don’t know - ”

“I didn’t say I didn’t know,” Will snaps, refusing to look at him. 

“Oh, my mistake. We’re just standing here for our health then, are we?”

Will patiently ignores him. They have been on the road for two days, and Allan has kept up a constant stream of conversation, mostly one-sided, for the entirety of that time. Will has gone past finding it comforting, through annoying, and has come out the other side into a sort of blithe indifference. 

What  _is_  annoying is that if he was just given a few moments to think in peace, he’d be able to work this out. He says so, somewhat irritably.

“There’s no shame in bein’ lost. I get lost all the time. I got lost in Clun once.”

“There’s only  _four houses_  in Clun,” Will grinds out, “and I’m not lost, because I know where Scarborough is. I just need to think.”

Allan sniffs. It’s the sniff that means ‘well, it’s your funeral’, and it would be more tolerable if it wasn’t immediately followed up by a loud sigh and the sound of Allan saying “mad idea, right, but why don’t we  _ask someone_?”

Will turns to him at last. “We can’t just stroll into town, Allan, we’re  _outlaws_.”

“Oh, right, and people out here’ll care about that, will they? Come on, there’s no way anyone here even knows who Robin Hood  _is_ , let alone who his mates are.”

“There could be guards,” says Will lamely, but even as he says it he knows it rings hollow. What there could be is people, families, fathers and sons; things that remind him all too sharply of the hole in his chest where Locksley used to be.

Allan claps him on the shoulder and springs to his feet. “Come on. I’ll buy you a drink if there’s a pub.”

“The last thing you need is more beer,” says Will, but he follows anyway, because there isn’t really a choice.

 

Allan leans over a ramshackle stone wall and waves a hand cheerily at a woman with arms full of washing. “Mornin’, missus! Any chance of a hand?”

The woman narrows her eyes, but passes the bundle of clothes to one of the seemingly endless swarm of children running around the place. Allan winks at the boy, who grins back. Will wonders if it’s because Allan never had this kind of life that it doesn’t seem to hurt him so much, or in spite of it.

“What can I do for you boys?” the woman asks, friendly but guarded.

“No trouble, miss, honest. Just wonderin’ about some directions, if you catch my meaning.”

“Where to?”

“Tavern’d be favourite,” says Allan brightly, but Will speaks over the top of him.

“Scarborough, please, miss, if you know the way. Or just point us to someone who might.”

She frowns. “Not soldiers, are you?”

Both Allan and Will shake their heads forcefully, offering variations on ‘no’ and ‘not on your life’ and ‘I’ve never even held a sword, me’. 

“My brother here’s getting married,” says Allan easily. “He’s heading up to her family, but I wasn’t gonna let him have all the fun, now, was I?”

The woman smiles at Will, and leans on the wall to point down the road. “You’re a bit out of your way for Scarborough,” she says, “but if you head down the York road, you’ll be on the right track. Pretty girl, is she?”

Allan shrugs. “I prefer ‘em with a bit more meat to ‘em, but she’ll do for this streak of nothing,” he says, with another wink.

“Thanks,” says Will, feeling like a fifth wheel on a cart. “Thanks so much.”

“And as for a tavern,” she adds, with a smile, “there ain’t one around these parts, but I could do you a bottle or two, if you’re dry. Call it a wedding present, if you like?”

They nod, and she smiles and disappears into her house. Her son, trailing washing from his arms with seeming unawareness, stares at them both in fascination.

Allan scowls at him. “You keep gawpin’ like that, you’ll swallow a fly.”

“You’re  _really_  tall, mister,” the boy says to Will. “How come you’re so tall?”

“He ate all his greens when he was told to,” Allan retorts. “Now bugger off.”

 

They follow the road north, passing through villages and hamlets with no real cause for alarm, despite Will’s pleas for caution. Just outside a large farm with a decidedly imposing air, Allan freezes and hurriedly motions Will over to the side of the road. Will obeys, hand on his axe. Allan puts his finger to his lips and crouches down beside a fence.

“What?” Will hisses, automatically whispering. Allan shakes his head. “What? What is it? Is it guards? Is it Gisborne?”

Allan gives him a withering look, and mouths  _wait here_ , and then jumps over the fence and sprints off around the side of a building.

Will waits, half-convinced every second that the Sheriff is going to pop out of a hedge and have him shot. 

From the direction of the farm comes a yell, sounding somewhere between indignant and furious. Will jumps to his feet, axe drawn in a moment, and hesitates just long enough to feel bad about it. A fight, and he was too stupid to notice, too scared to help -

Allan comes tearing round the corner with an expression of the purest joy on his face, with a chicken under each arm and a string of onions round his neck.

“ _Thief!”_ shrieks the man chasing him, who is so angry that he has, for the most part, given up on words, and is instead opting to throw things at Allan’s rapidly retreating back. “ _You_   _bloody thief, get back here or I’ll - ”_

“Don’t help or anything, you idiot,” Allan yells, leaping the fence with impressive speed and thrusting one of the squabbling chickens into Will’s hands. “Come on!”

“Oh  _god_ ,” Will mouths. He turns to the farmer. “I’m so sorry - “ he tries, but the farmer has grabbed a pitchfork and is running towards them with speed.

“I’ll have your bloody  _head_  for this - ”

“Restin’ is the best part of valour, Will -” says Allan urgently.

“That’s not the - ”

“ - but I’ll settle for running like the blazes in this case. UP YOURS, MATE,” he adds triumphantly, waving his poor, beleaguered chicken in the air, and sprinting off down the road, cackling all the way. Will takes one more look at the farmer, and decides that maybe, for once, Allan has a point. 

By the time he catches up with him, he’s laughing too hard to breathe. “Lunatic,” Will gasps, clapping Allan on the shoulder. Allan grins and gives Will’s hand a kiss. The sun is too high in the sky for them to want to do anything but find some dry wood, lie on the grass, and have a really, really excellent lunch. 

“Your cooking’s gettin’ better, you know,” says Allan, with a mouthful of chicken.

 

That night, they sleep in an old charcoal burner’s hut, just off the York road; it’s been abandoned for longer than they have, and the weeds choking the door have made a thick enough carpet that Allan declares it “a bloody palace”.

Will, as he has every night so far, settles down to sleep with his hand just brushing against Allan’s back, enough to feel safe. Tonight, Allan rolls over to look at him. 

“What are you so scared of?” he asks, voice low.

Will’s too tired from the day’s walk to argue. “Everything,” he says.

Allan looks pained. Will remembers in a flash that he’s been doing this longer than any of them, except maybe Djaq - that this life of travelling and lies is something he’s used to as much as Robin and Much were used to war. Allan always expected this to end; never thought Robin would stick around.

Will supposes he just hoped for more, because he needed more.

For all his easy smiles, Allan’s a pessimist at heart, and Will - Will has always been a dreamer.

“Will,” Allan says softly, “you don’t  _have_  to be scared, alright? I can look after both of us.”

“You don’t need to look after me,” Will protests. Allan’s fingers are not as rough as Will’s are, not as used to working hard, but they’re still unexpected when they entwine with his, warm and firm. He doesn’t look down, though, and keeps his gaze locked with Allan’s. It seems important, and he’s not sure why.

Allan raises his eyebrows, his eyes crinkled. “Maybe I want to.”

“I’m serious, Allan. I’m not a kid. I can take care of myself just as well as you can. Better, probably.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” says Allan.  He’s only a few years older than Will is; five at most, and although he looks impossibly tired, it shows in the brightness of his eyes. A flicker, perhaps, of uncertainty; of hope. “With me, I mean. I’m glad you came with.”

Will nods. Allan runs his thumb over the back of Will’s hand and hardly seems to be aware that he’s doing it.

“You don’t have to be, though, is my point. If you wanted to - to go back, or whatever, you could do that. I’d understand.”

“I don’t want to go back,” says Will automatically, and then he’s surprised to find that it’s true. 

He grasps Allan’s hand and brings it to his mouth, stopping just short of his lips. Allan smiles at him, whole and open and honest, and it’s unexpectedly beautiful.

_Oh_ , Will thinks.  _That’s what it is._

“We’ll be alright, Will, you and me. I promise.”

“I know,” Will whispers. And he does.

This isn’t the life he expected, but it’s the life he’s living. There will be other blacksmiths in Locksley. There’ll be other outlaws in the forest. There might even be a forge in Scarborough, if they have forges that far north. 

But there’s only one Allan A Dale, and Will’s got hold of him. 

And he doesn’t intend to let to go.


End file.
